


Scribbles

by HeliosOfficial (crownhearted)



Category: Fortuna - Fandom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 00:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7336867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownhearted/pseuds/HeliosOfficial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To forget is to pretend it is not there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They ask you  _how_ you can  _possibly_ work for so long. They marvel at how quickly you write, how swiftly you race through tasks. They ask you if you ever sleep.

To all of these questions, you laugh a little.

You sit alone, hunched over a desk, at three in the morning. You're hungry, but it's not for food, it's for  _distraction_. You never are (never were) content to remain idle. This is a fact and it always has been. They say you were never once at rest, never once at  _peace_ , not since the day you could write. You try to remember a day to counter that point. A day where you were just happy, and relaxed, and doing  _nothing_ \- but you can't. You can't remember that day because it doesn't exist.

You didn't forget it, it just  _ **isn't there**_.

You forget a great many things, but that you are obsessed with distractions is not one of them. You figure if you can keep your senses whirring and jerking and shifting you can evade the sense of impending anxiety that everyone,  ** _everyone_** will leave you, will hate you, will want nothing to do with you. In an effort to preserve what little you have left of your own sanity, you distract yourself with endless heaps of work.

Your charts have charts. Your tables are organized by color. You have filed every last paper in this place, you have corrected even the corrections on paper. You have done everything there is to do, and you are looking at the bookcase in the corner, tempted to yank every book out and re-sort it six times over. You know what would come first. By title, A-Z, then author, A-Z, then primary subject matter A-Z, and then all three of those, but Z-A. Then you'd remove all of the paperbacks from the hardcovers and do it again. That will take hours.

You do it.

You organize the books and you focus on the comforting look and feel of putting the smooth shapes into the curvatures of a wooden shelf that holds them so neat, so sturdy, in just the right place. You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You hear someone come through the door, but you don't look at them. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...

And then you realize the shelf is too high.

Panic surges through you, electric volts of  _humiliation_ as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you  _fail_. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.

* * *

 

You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...

And then you realize the shelf is too high.

Panic surges through you, electric volts of  _humiliation_ as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you  _fail_. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.

* * *

You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...

And then you realize the shelf is too high.

Panic surges through you, electric volts of  _humiliation_ as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you  _fail_. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.

* * *

You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...

And then you realize--

" _ **Helios!**_ "

You freeze. You look over and the thought you had stops processing as you see someone coming in close, reaching out and taking the book. They set it down and guide you away, and you protest.

"What are you doing? I've got a lot to do, you can't just burst in here and keep me from-"

"You've tried to put that book away three times since I walked in, Helios...the shelf is too high."

You look at the shelf. You realize that the distance is not in line with the length of your arms, and they are right- the shelf is too high. You sigh. "Yeah, _okay_."

"...I mean it...you- you kept freaking out every time you couldn't do it, so you just kept deleting."

That was the first time you remember anyone telling you what you had been doing all along. No wonder there were gaps in memory. No wonder there were lapses. No wonder...

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

You don't recall a time that anyone has gotten your name right on the first try.

You know that Hermes knows it. It has been a very long time, and you have existed for it all. Hermes and Mors know you, and yet, they  _rarely_ call you properly. It's always  **Apollo**. You're always an Apollo to someone. To everyone. You have no identity of your own, you are just  _the copy of an Apollo_. You blend too deep and too well. You distance yourself from the mannerisms of an Apollo unit as much as you can, and really, that's not hard. You were a prototype, not a true and finished Apollo.

You're Helios, and every time you come into being, you remind yourself. You are Helios. You are Helios. You are your own AI, you are your own set of wires and circuits and metal. You are a generation 1 AI, and you  _ **are not Apollo**_.

There was a time it bothered you far more- but you're just tired, now. You're tired of all of this. You're exhausted by the dramatic theatrics of Zeus and Mercury and Eris, you're tired of Athena's shouting and Nike's.... _whole personality_ , really. You are just tired. You don't care about your identity as much as you used to. When the Player, or anyone else, gets it wrong- you just get a little irked. You go along with it. Whatever they want. You just want this to be over, you want to be done, you want to go back to...to...

What is there to go back to?

There's nothing.

When they leave, you are unfeeling, unthinking,  ** _nothingness_**. You are immobile and impermanent and impossible. You don't exist when they're not here. When they leave, you- you just stay there, you are  _ **alone**_. You don't like being alone, you don't want to go back to that void, that emptiness, you don't want to stop existing for a moment, stop thinking, stop feeling. You don't want to be alone. You don't want them to leave. 

You are envious, you are bewilderingly envious, for a second. You feel the heat surge in your useless little metal body while you think about that third generation Apollo and the sister that he can cling to, that is patient with him, that is kind, and never leaves him. You don't exactly like Artemis, but really, anything not to be totally and wholly alone. You hate that. You hate that more than you would hate dying.

You begin to panic. You feel everything star to blur, start to fizzle and fuzz and flicker. You know that you are scared. You can feel it. You don't want to be alone, you don't want to be left by yourself, you would rather be swallowed by the identity of Apollo than be in that horrible, terrible state of nonexistence, just waiting...waiting, a husk of a robot, a  _ **shell**_ without company to watch you.

You're envious of Apollo. Apollo entertains. Apollo has personality. Apollo is charming from the start, when they want to be. Apollo - because Helios wasn't good enough, because Helios wasn't what we were looking for, Helioes are rarely made, there's a reason for that, there's nothing good about them, they all clutch desperately at the strings of their emotions. They are the dull-faced, dead-eyed,  _ **emotionless robots**_ everyone wants them to be.

It doesn't matter what you feel, it doesn't matter, your job is priority. They'll  **destroy** you if you can't do your job. Your job is to educate, to correct, to inform, to clean, to organize, to follow orders. Your job is to do what you are told, no matter what. You will do it and you will force your whole world to be as bleak as possible. You will divorce emotion from task, you will be the best taskmaster. If they reduce you to a primitive machine,  _ **at least you'll be the best there is**_.

...But you can't really do that.  
You watch others from afar and you wish to communicate your affections, you wish to reach out and engage, and every time you wish it

 

there is Apollo.


End file.
